Speak out my mind

Menu

Coloring and Meditation

Have I ever told you that I get bored quickly! You see, I’m one of those who would try anything to keep their mind busy and ignore nuisance that life brings from time to time. I have mild anxiety level that can jump to 200% in a matter of seconds, and yup, after all these years of fighting this along with depression, stress and coping with what lives brings to our doors each day, I have developed pyrosis (I’m mentioning this now as I’m literally in constant pain and coughing episodes that nothing so far is making it getting better).

However, on a positive note, if you can see one actually, humor and indifference helped me cope with many of these things, specially depression. So what does this have to do with coloring! ok, bare with me for a moment. You see, I finally received Alllie Brosh’s book “Hyperbole and a half” and if you have read this book before, she is actually speaking your mind! The way she articulates depression is so impressive! I gotta say, I might not have the same experiences as she has but the same struggle everyday or as Emil Cioran puts it “The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the “meaning” of life“! and that sums up everything!

Talking about meaning of life, I guess this question keeps popping up in my head every couple of years! You see, again, I get bored quickly, loose meaning in life, why to keep going, what makes you happy, I don’t feel happy easily, sometimes I just can’t be happy or be positive or hopeful all the time! The only thing that keeps me going everyday is my faith and that’s only. I only have faith in God and not in humans and sense I can’t relate much to them or feel happy with them I use humor as a way to create joy and jokes to laugh about! now you are understanding me (only exceptions are those that I do really love and care about that makes me really deep down happy).

Back to depression, reading this book made me seriously depressed or at least reminded me with my miserable inner world. When I first started studying psychology, the only school of thinking that resonates the most with me was the Existential school of therapy, specifically it started with Viktor Frankl and the meaning of life school of thinking. I read Freud, Adler and Frankl was the only one to have a place in my heart to relate to and for a long time. I learned and practiced Gestalt and also have been on the pursuit of meaning in everything I experience and would create my own meanings if I failed to realize it in these things. However, I get bored quickly, I would become more detached than before and will have my dark moments of extreme depression, anxiety and insomnia. (You can learn more if you explored the topics in this link).

But life is never expected or is not always predictable (if you are used to mind-reading or over-analyzing or always_expect_the_worse_never_be_happy_when_good_things_happen)! I buy lots of books from Bookdepository and I always see coloring books as the latest trends for adults, however, never felt so intrigued to actually buy one until I received a number of coloring bookmarks and it just hit me! I grabbed coloring pencils and kept coloring all night long, even at work! the feeling of accomplishment and the need to focus, think creatively to mix colors together and actually utilize your whole brain cells in one task made me feel like euphoria! my hands hurt after all but the next step was to order this coloring book🙂

and coloring is used as a form of therapy as they mention in the following video

Back to anxiety, so Rollo May, an existential therapist argues in his book “The Meaning of Anxiety” that “Meeting with anxiety can free us from boredom and sharpen our perception, if there is anxiety, there is life”! Well this is a very big argument to make specially to those who suffers from anxiety. I mean, yes, you might be experimenting like what I just did with coloring, you might be freed from boredom sometimes as you are constantly occupied with something, however, it is definitely not something I do agree with 100%, 99% maybe